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Comment by jabretti | Hacker News Reader

That sounds like a city-dweller's perspective.

Sure, I would almost certainly be dead, but life on Earth would continue, our species would continue, and our civilisation would continue (albeit with some major setbacks).

Besides, I don't think anyone's nuclear war plan is actually to destroy every major to semi-major city on Earth. In a realistic 1980s nuclear war, a lot of nukes would be targeted at military bases and the like. Plenty of others would destroy every major city in the US and USSR, plus each country's nuclear-armed allies. Maybe we here in Australia would get a nuke or two out of spite. But is anyone going to bother to nuke South America?

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> In a realistic 1980s nuclear war, a lot of nukes would be targeted at military bases and the like

i think it's mentioned in Command and Control (book) but if I recall correctly the plan from the US perspective was not only to nuke military targets, but also all major population centers, with several thermonuclear bombs for each target, for good measure. And that was not only the USSR, but basically every ally of the USSR as well.

You can imagine that the other side was also going to do about the same thing.

Sure, some countries may have been relatively spared, but all in all the whole of Europe, US, Russia, China, would have been annihilated.

> ... is anyone going to bother to nuke South America?

Yes.

There is this tendency to assume that, because you're ("you're" in the general sense) not thinking about a place, then that place necessarily isn't important from a geopolitical point of view.

Not taking into account the geopolitical value of maintaining military bases on the US's southern flanks, it's worth noting that Brazil is the 12th largest oil producer, among its many other important economic attributes. Argentina is one of the go-to places for China to buy farm land[1]. Take those two and you're left with basically 10% of South America.

1. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303823104576391...

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